Micah Ellis unlocked his bike with the same precision he used to balance chemical equations—quick, quiet, a little obsessive.
Redwood High loomed behind him in its usual uninspired shade of beige, with windows that always looked like they were squinting at you, judging. The air smelled like morning grass and vending machine hash browns, the unofficial perfume of the senior quad. A trio of football guys in hoodies lumbered past, one of them dragging a lacrosse stick like it was a leash for a badly behaved dog.
Micah adjusted his glasses, already smudged with thumbprint logic, and muttered under his breath, "Another glorious day in the social petri dish."
"Still narrating your life like a disgruntled science documentary?" came a voice behind him.
He smiled.
Zoe Tan strode into view with her signature black combat boots, denim jacket covered in enamel pins, and a flyer for some protest he was probably about to get guilted into. Her hair was a calculated mess, one side buzzed short and the other tumbling in loose curls dyed the color of a rusting penny.
"Only in places where hope comes to die," Micah replied.
"Perfect. I brought you something."
She handed him a flyer, hand-drawn and scrawled with red Sharpie:STOP FUNDING SPORTS. FUND BRAINS INSTEAD.Beneath it was a cartoon of a football helmet crushing a stack of textbooks.
Micah sighed theatrically. "You know I love you, but one day the jocks are going to actually read one of these and punt us both into a trash can."
"They'd have to know how to read first," Zoe said sweetly, slinging her backpack over one shoulder.
They walked toward the front steps, cutting through crowds that split like cell mitosis around them. The cliques at Redwood weren't so much rigid as they were invisible—everyone knew the rules, even if no one said them out loud. Athletes in the center. Theater kids by the arts building. Gamers clustered like moss near the library. And Micah? Micah drifted through them like an electron: too sciencey for the artists, too introverted for the nerds, too not-Jace for everyone else.
"Did you finish your chem project?" Zoe asked, nudging his shoulder.
"I live to titrate," Micah said. "I'm trying to synthesize thermochromic compounds that change color with heat, but the reagents are finicky."
Zoe blinked. "You just said words like they weren't weapons."
Micah grinned. "You asked."
They reached the main building and stopped beneath a banner that read SPIRIT WEEK: GET FIRED UP! in glittery letters. Zoe rolled her eyes so hard he thought she might pull a muscle.
"God, it's like being trapped inside a Hallmark card written by a gym teacher."
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"It is a bad thing."
From across the quad, laughter erupted—a smooth, deep sound that pulled attention like gravity.
Jace Camden.
Wearing his letterman jacket like it came with a birthright, Jace stood in the middle of a circle of admirers, tossing an orange between his hands as if life itself was effortless. Golden hair, lazy smirk, eyes like the exact shade of blue that made girls in calculus class forget their equations. Zoe visibly stiffened.
"He's got the personality of a dead battery and the fanbase of a cult," she muttered.
Micah tried not to look, but he did. He always did.
Jace tossed the orange in the air, caught it behind his back, and smiled like he knew cameras were rolling.
Micah turned away quickly, pretending to study the flyer Zoe had given him.
Zoe didn't notice. "I'm printing a hundred more of these," she said. "Maybe we stick them on all the gym lockers. Make it a movement."
"Or make it a one-way ticket to getting your tires slashed," Micah said.
Zoe just smiled, sharp as scissors.
The bell rang, shrill and final.
They walked into the building together.
The chemistry lab was his cathedral.
Not in the spiritual sense—Micah didn't believe in much beyond molecular bonds and the occasional miracle of a working Bunsen burner—but in the way that being here made everything else quieter. The noise of the hallways, the cafeteria hierarchies, the forced cheer of school spirit—all of it melted away beneath the humming fluorescents and the familiar smell of acetone, metal, and antiseptic lemon.
Micah shrugged off his hoodie and slipped into a too-large lab coat with frayed sleeves. The clock ticked like a metronome. On the counter, his project waited: an array of test tubes lined up like obedient soldiers, each containing a different variation of his heat-reactive solution.
He adjusted the heat lamp, jotted notes in the margin of his composition notebook, and held up one of the vials. The compound shimmered—a murky gray that, when heated, was supposed to turn bright teal.
It didn't.
Micah frowned. "You're a liar," he told the liquid.
Outside the lab's tall, narrow windows, students streamed through the quad below, just a few feet from the edge of his world. He could see the lunch tables already filling, food containers popping open, conversations rolling like waves—background static of high school life.
Then he saw him.
Jace Camden again, this time seated with his usual orbit of athletes and girls who used "like" as punctuation. He had that same relaxed lean, like nothing in the world could tip him off balance. Someone tossed a Gatorade bottle at him; he caught it without looking and cracked it open one-handed, laughing at something a teammate said.
Micah blinked and looked away, irritated at himself for watching.
Jace Camden was a walking contradiction. Everyone called him the golden boy because it was true—varsity lacrosse captain, straight-A student (somehow), face like he was airbrushed by evolution. But there were rumors too. That he wasn't as squeaky clean as he looked. That he partied off-campus with college kids. That he'd been in a fight last year that the school covered up. Micah didn't believe half of it.
Still. Something about him always scraped against Micah's nerves.
Maybe it was the effortless way Jace floated through everything that Micah had to claw his way through. Or maybe it was the way he smiled like nothing could touch him. Or maybe—and this was the part Micah never said out loud—it was because he didn't know what to make of the way Jace looked at people sometimes. The way he had looked at Micah, once or twice. Like he was noticing him.
But that was probably wishful paranoia. High school was full of optical illusions.
He turned back to his experiment and clicked the heat lamp off.
The compound stayed gray.
Micah muttered a string of words that would've gotten him extra detention in Catholic school. Then he leaned over, flipped a page in his notes, and froze.
The smell.
Something sharp. Acrid. Like burned plastic and paper.
He sniffed the air. Checked his setup.
The Bunsen burner was off. The heat lamp wasn't even warm yet. Everything on his side of the lab was in order.
He glanced toward the supply closet at the back of the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Maybe it was coming from the hallway? Maybe someone burned popcorn in the teacher's lounge again. That had happened before. Once, in spectacular fashion.
Still, he stood up slowly.
Out the window, the lunch crowd was oblivious. Jace was leaning back now, arms draped along the bench like he was holding court. Someone threw a fry at him and he caught it in his mouth. Of course he did.
Micah rolled his eyes. Then he looked again.
The sky above the courtyard looked off—just slightly.
A blur, a distortion in the upper left corner of the window.
Smoke?
The bell rang for next period, but no one moved.
Micah pressed his hand to the cool glass and narrowed his eyes.
Smoke. Definitely.
And it was coming from somewhere close.
Micah made it to the courtyard just in time to see Zoe climb up on one of the stone benches like she was about to deliver the State of the Union in combat boots.
He knew that stance. The wide shoulders. The paper in one fist. The righteous fire building behind her eyes.
"Zoe," he called out cautiously, "please tell me this is just an interpretive dance."
"I'm staging a lunchtime truth drop," she replied without looking at him. "Witness me."
Micah groaned. "That's not even the correct Mad Max reference."
But it was too late.
Students paused mid-bite and turned. Phones came out. The ever-hungry lens of teenage attention zoomed in. Zoe raised her paper and read, voice loud, clear, and very, very public:
"'Redwood High allocates 47% of its annual student activity budget to sports teams, leaving just 17% split between arts, clubs, and STEM. That's not school spirit. That's fiscal discrimination.'"
A few murmurs. Some laughter. Someone whistled.
From the other end of the courtyard, Micah saw Jace turn his head.
Zoe kept going, voice rising.
"While athletes get new jerseys every year, our science lab is using glassware etched with names from the 90s. I checked. One beaker said Property of Mr. Levenson, who I Googled—he's been dead since 2003. Rest in peace, but I'm not trying to run titrations with ghostware."
Now the laughter was real. Even Micah smiled, in spite of the anxiety simmering in his gut.
Jace stood up.
Micah felt the change in air pressure like a thunderclap before the storm.
Jace crossed the courtyard, cutting through the crowd without touching anyone. He didn't even need to raise his voice.
"Hey," he said, calm and infuriatingly self-assured. "Is this gonna be a regular thing, or should I start charging admission?"
Zoe turned toward him slowly. The audience hushed like a classroom right after someone tips over a desk.
Micah stepped forward instinctively, hands out, placating.
"Let's not—"
"Just wondering," Jace said, eyes on Zoe, "what makes you the expert on what this school needs? You speak for everyone now?"
"No," Zoe said, sharp as flint. "Just the ones who aren't worshipped for being able to chase a ball."
"Right," Jace said, with a tight smile. "Because wanting your team to win is the same thing as worship. That's a super chill take."
"It's not about the team. It's about how this school bends over backwards to serve athletes while everyone else scrapes for scraps."
Micah tried again. "Zoe, maybe we—"
But she wasn't done.
"You get a broken water fountain in the girls' locker room? It takes three weeks to fix. Football practice loses a lightbulb? The whole field gets rewired overnight. That's not coincidence. That's bias."
"You think I'm the one pulling strings behind the scenes?" Jace asked. His voice stayed level, but Micah saw his jaw tighten. "You think I get to decide where the money goes?"
"You benefit from it," Zoe snapped. "Same thing."
Jace blinked, then smiled—but it was a cold smile, the kind you give before flipping a chessboard.
"Maybe if your little science club could fill the bleachers, someone would notice you too."
A collective oooh rose from the crowd.
Zoe's face flushed, not with embarrassment but with heat. "Wow," she said. "Thank you for that illuminating glimpse into your mediocrity."
Micah moved between them.
"Okay," he said quickly, voice too high. "We've all aired our grievances. Let's maybe not get kicked out of school today."
Zoe didn't look at him. Jace didn't either.
Their eyes locked in some ancient battle Micah didn't have the right kind of sword for.
Then Jace stepped back, hands up in mock surrender. "I'm not trying to start anything," he said, loud enough for the crowd. "I've got practice. Some of us have actual responsibilities."
With that, he turned and walked off, lacrosse stick tapping the concrete behind him like a metronome for war.
The students began to disperse, disappointed that no one had thrown a punch.
Micah turned to Zoe.
"Subtlety?" he said. "Ever met her?"
Zoe finally looked at him, her face still burning. "He's lucky I believe in nonviolence."
"I'm pretty sure I saw you Google tasers last week."
"That's for research."
They started walking back toward the academic wing. The crowd's noise faded behind them.
"Do you ever just," Micah said, "feel like we're living in a sitcom where the laugh track broke and now we're just yelling in the dark?"
"All the time," Zoe said.
Then, for a moment, they were both quiet.
And from somewhere in the distance, a siren began to rise.
The fire alarm didn't sound like it did in drills. In drills, it was shrill and annoying—too loud to ignore but too familiar to panic over.
This time, it sounded wrong. Like someone had punched through the ceiling with a siren made of static. It screamed in uneven pulses, skipping beats like a skipping record. A warning, yes—but not one anyone had planned.
Micah was halfway down the hallway when it started.
He dropped his notebook.
Students burst from classrooms like startled birds, clattering and shouting over each other. A teacher with a clipboard tried to herd them toward the gym with all the urgency of a sleep-deprived sheepdog.
Micah didn't move.
The smoke was already there—curling along the edges of the hallway floor like dark lace. He could see it creeping from under the double doors of the chemistry lab.
His chest tightened.
No. No no no.
He took a step forward.
"Micah!" someone shouted. It was Zoe, down the hall, shoving past students. "What are you doing?!"
"My project," he said. "It's in there."
"Are you kidding me?" she grabbed his sleeve, yanking him back as the smoke thickened. "Your life is out here. Let's go!"
He didn't remember deciding to follow her, but then they were moving—backpedaling, shoved into the crowd of students evacuating through the side doors, everyone coughing and yelling and wide-eyed with that strange combination of excitement and fear that only comes when something is actually wrong.
Outside, the air slapped him in the face—cool, clean, too bright. The fire trucks were already wailing in the distance, sirens getting louder by the second.
He turned around just in time to see the second-story window of the chem lab burst with a pop of heat. Not an explosion, but a push. A bloom of dark gray smoke poured out like it had been waiting to escape.
"Oh my god," Zoe whispered.
Micah couldn't speak. He felt his pulse in his fingertips.
A small group of teachers huddled on the far side of the parking lot, walkie-talkies crackling, trying to take roll.
Someone handed out water bottles like they were antidotes.
Jace was on the opposite side of the lot, standing with the lacrosse team, his face unusually still. No smirk. No comment. Just a tight line across his mouth, arms crossed over his chest like he was trying not to move.
For a moment, Micah's eyes met his across the chaos.
Jace tilted his head slightly, frowning.
Micah looked away.
Principal Dahl emerged from the building with ash on her blazer and a radio clutched tight to her side. She barked into it, then turned to wave a firefighter over. More sirens. More yelling. A swirl of voices that barely registered.
Zoe squeezed Micah's arm.
"You okay?" she asked.
He shook his head slowly.
"I don't know."
Because in the span of fifteen minutes, everything had changed.
His project—months of work, notes, samples, ideas—might be gone. The lab—the only place at school that made sense—was now a scorched shell. The rules, the routine, the equations he could trust?
Burned.
And somewhere in that smoke, something else had shifted.
Something Micah couldn't name yet.
But he could feel it.